Start Teaching Decision Making Skills Early
Making sure your ADHD child listens and follows directions begins with helping them understand proper decision making. For your children, when you tell them to do something, they find themselves with a decision to make. They can either choose to obey or choose to disobey.
To help them choose well, you need to let them know about decision making. They need to have a basic foundation of how decisions and consequences function. To help them best, you should teach them early that positive choices reap positive rewards while negative decisions produce negative results.
Start teaching this at an early age. Whenever you ask your child to do something, and they appear indecisive, you should instruct them that they have a decision to make. They can choose to listen and obey or choose to not listen.
As you explain this, explain to them also the consequences of each choice. For instance, with choosing to obey, they can play video games for an extra 15 minutes. In not obeying, though, they will not be able to watch TV.
With providing your child clear results and teaching decision making, you help your child understand that choices matter. This also instructs them to identify when they face a decision-making opportunity. With these skills, your child will better be able to know when you want them to follow directions and how they need to respond.
Coach Benjamin Mizrahi. Educator. Learning Specialist. Family Coach. Father. Husband.
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